Strike ended

The argument against the strike was that such action would:
1. harm patients
2. degrade trust between docs and patient
3. destroy the image of medics as an altruistic profession
4. placing patient as 'ransom'
5. docs are already overpaid
One of of my teachers here proposed that the strike action should be considered in an utilitarian light, which means if the long-term benefit far outweigh the short-term damages then the action can be justified. I totally agree with him (I'm sure he's not reading this blog - I'm not looking for favours here :D) and I felt halting brain drain is better in the long-term than the inconvenience of a 48-hour strike. Malaysia too is suffering from brain-drain, in fact it is far worse than NZ. 4 years ago, a Malaysian public health officer told me that the turnover of doctor from public health service to private sector or oversea is 1 doctor per day! I'm pretty sure the trends remain more or less the same. The problem is further exacerbated by the stop-gap measures taken to fill the void created. One of them is restricting specialist training in Malaysia in order to ensure there are enough junior doctors around. This only result in more turnovers as junior doctors are drove out due to poor prospect. NB: My knowledge on Malaysian health system were mostly anecdotes from people who used to work/studied there and is dated to at least 1-2 years ago. Recently, a pay rise were given to civil servant in Malaysia including doctors, which saw them gaining a quite significant increase in wage. However, the housemanship (internship) years were extended to 2 years as there were quite a number of high profile cases of medical misadventure during election year.
Some idea taken from:
Frizelle, F. Is it ethicals for doctors to strike? NZ med J 2006; 119(1236):1-2

Photo taken from http://www.engrish.com/ and is copyrighted to them.